Bryan Danielson – “I’m Not Gonna Be A Full-Time Wrestler For Much Longer”
Bryan Danielson has discussed if he has any thoughts about his final match and says that he won’t be “a full-time wrestler for much longer.”
Bryan Danielson joined AEW in 2021 following a decade spent with WWE where he memorably headlined WrestleMania 30 and captured the WWE World Heavyweight Championship.
More recently Danielson competed at Full Gear but was unsuccessful in dethroning Chris Jericho as Ring of Honor World Champion. The American Dragon’s immediate future looked even more uncertain following the main event when William Regal apparently turned his back on Jon Moxley and the Blackpool Combat Club to align with MJF.
Speaking on One Fall with Ron Funches, Bryan Danielson opened up about what he sees as the ideal way to have his last match and says his full-time wrestling days are over when his AEW contract expires:
“No [I don’t have a dream scenario for my final match]… I would like to wrestle a match two weeks before I die, right? And to not know that it’s my last match. That would kind of be my ideal situation but I’m not gonna be a full-time wrestler for much longer [laughs]. That all said, I’m not gonna be a full-time wrestler for much longer. When my AEW contract is up, that’s pretty much me being done being a full-time wrestler but I like the way some people like Terry Funk and Jerry Lawler and those kind of guys do it where they do it for fun, right?”
“And don’t do it all the time, they do it here or there, that sort of thing. But as long as I have fun doing it and as long as I experience joy doing it, it’s something I wanna continue doing for the rest of my life.”
“Now, I wish my passion was something that didn’t cause me as much physical pain because for sure, if I was really gonna play the guitar which I could be if I put enough effort into it and if it brought me that kind of passion, I could be playing music or whatever literally the day before I die or whatever it is. But as it is now, it’d probably have to be like at least two weeks, if not a little bit before the day that I die”
Bryan Danielson then reflected on his earlier retirement from wrestling when injuries forced him to step away from the ring for several years. Danielson noted that he hopes his final match is just one that he has fun in:
“One of the things that was really brought to my attention when I was forced to retire was that you never know when your last match is gonna be”
“[…] The last match that I had before I was forced to retire, I didn’t know that was gonna be my last match, right? And then, it was and I didn’t know it was gonna be my last match until two months later when they were like, ‘Okay, yeah, I don’t think we’re gonna let you come back’ and then it turned out to not be my last match. So I went for years thinking that was gonna be my last match and then it wasn’t.”
“[…] I don’t have any vision of what I want my last match to be. I certainly don’t envision it being some epic match that everybody talks about. In my mind, it would be a match that I would just be doing at some local indie in front of 300 people that are just like, okay, I’m just going out and having some fun and it just turns out to be my last match [laughs]. So that’s kind of how I envision it.”